[frud]

The raw words written to the drive are actually re-encoded into slightly larger codewords with nice properties like not having too many zero or one bits in a row, and error detection/correction.

Plus I think that the 0/1 bits are not encoded as "no magnetism"/"some magnetism", but instead as "north magnetism"/"south magnetism" since magnetic fields have a direction.

And I don't think the magnetic fields on the platters have any appreciable effect on the head besides the electromagnetic effects at the sensor.